


duty calls

by yukonecho (yavanna)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: ...mostly, ...to Friends to Lovers, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, katara is the boss, pretty much compliant with ATLA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26402416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yavanna/pseuds/yukonecho
Summary: All her life, Katara’s first love might be her own sense of responsibility.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 120





	duty calls

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Out of the Blue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/853116) by [miikkaa_xx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miikkaa_xx/pseuds/miikkaa_xx). 



> I was reading Out of the Blue and thinking about what could pull Katara away from Aang and into Zuko's arms for a little while...and then I woke up at 4am thinking about this fic. So, here we are.
> 
> Mostly Katara/Zuko, somewhat canon compliant Katara/Aang.

Katara has been confident in her responsibilities as long as she can remember. It’s been a long time since her mother was gone, since her father left, and someone has to cook and clean, to take care of herself and Gran Gran and Sokka. She painstakingly sews Sokka’s new parka when he outgrows the last one that she made him. She uses her few waterbending skills to catch a fish or two when Sokka’s having a bad day. Katara sees what must be done and is the one to do it. It gives her a sense of purpose, a full heart, to feel like she can take on all the little things and take care of the people she loves.

When the boy in the iceberg appears, and someone has to take him up to the Northern Water Tribe to be trained as a waterbender, to encourage him to save the world, duty calls. And Katara? Katara will always answer. She gets on the flying bison and leaves her family, choking back tears, knowing that Gran Gran will take care of them. Her task is elsewhere now, with this tiny airbender who smiles up at her with big, big grey eyes.

~~~~

Zuko takes Aang from the spirit oasis and Katara has never been so angry. Protecting Aang is her _job_ and she will not be bested by some petty Fire Nation teenager with a bad haircut. “Fuck this fucking irresponsible, selfish, Fire Nation damned asshole” she mutters, and Appa bellows in agreement as they follow the light of Aang’s spirit to the cave where Zuko holds him. 

When Zuko comes running out of the cave chasing Aang, she channels all her frustration and rage—at her own failure—into a giant column of snow to crush him. “Not much of a match”, she snarls, and turns to see Aang staring at her with wide, afraid eyes. 

She doesn’t say a word when Aang picks up Zuko’s limp body out of the snow and heaves him onto Appa’s back. “He’ll die if we leave him here,” Aang says quietly.

Sokka nods. “Sure, buddy,” he says. Katara just narrows her eyes.

~~~~

Katara will do anything if it means Aang can save the world from the Fire Nation, and that’s how she ends up trapped in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se.

With him. The living, breathing, flaming incarnation of the Fire Nation in her life.

She doesn’t want to talk to him, at first. Doesn’t want to listen, or acknowledge him, or hear about his _emotional journey_. But then he brings up the loss of his mother, and Katara understands that feeling all too well, knows how it can shape a person as it has shaped her. 

And in spite of herself, she softens a bit hearing his story. “At least you have always had your uncle to look out for you,” she tells him wistfully. It feels like a long time ago that she left Gran Gran behind at the South Pole, that her father left.

Zuko laughs, a rasping chuckle in his throat. It’s a sound she wasn’t sure he was even capable of making, but it’s appealing in its own scarred way. Like, she considers, Zuko’s face. High cheekbones, sharp jawline, glinted golden eyes, angles and lines accentuated by their disruption on the left side of his face. 

“Uncle can’t restore my honor. Only my father can,” he tells her bluntly, laugh fading from his throat. 

And she can’t help but to ask—“Why do you need that honor? Isn’t there honor in doing what is right? What is your duty?”

Zuko smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Maybe, but my duty was to capture the Avatar.”

Katara flinches, and Zuko leans towards her from where he sits a few feet away. “Maybe I don’t need that duty to restore my honor anymore,” he adds quietly. “But this scar reminds me and everyone else, every day, about how I failed my father.”

Katara lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Maybe I can help,” she says quietly, pulling out her flask with water from the Spirit Oasis. “Maybe the scar reminds you of an old duty you no longer need.”

Zuko’s right eye widens, and Katara knows she has touched him. “You’d do that?” he whispers, and she nods with a small smile.

And then Aang bursts in and Azula kicks the door down, and the moment ruined. Katara watches Zuko be pulled in by Azula’s lies, and the piece of her heart he had touched freezes over.

~~~~

Aang dies. Katara brings him back with water from the spirit oasis, because that is what she does. Aang is her responsibility.

The next time she sees Zuko, she will fucking kill him.

~~~~

Zuko is the last person on Earth that Katara wants to show up at the Western Air Temple.

“Get the fuck out of here,” she spits, and Zuko shrinks back, right eye wide.

Sokka stands up straighter next to her. “Zuko, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to join the group,” he says hesitantly.

It’s Aang who strikes the final blow. “I just don’t think we can trust you after everything you’ve done,” he tells Zuko, and Zuko slumps. That frozen piece of Katara’s heart twinges, and she can’t tell if she’s happy or not to see him so downtrodden.

But the others all agree to bringing Zuko onto the team after he saves them from Combustion Man, and her loyalty, her duty is to her friends, so she reluctantly agrees too. But she watches him, and she refuses to care for him. She will not be responsible for Zuko.

It’s refreshing, in a way. Aang trains and she trains and she cooks, and cleans, and sews, and pesters Sokka for his smelly socks so she can wash them. She reminds Toph to be kind and caring and a little less brash. She gives Aang a long hug when he wallows in his sense of being overwhelmed by the task ahead of him. She makes everyone dinner, and washes everyone’s dish except Zuko’s. She leaves Zuko to do his own laundry. And Zuko…seems fine. 

He doesn’t need her to take care of him, she realizes one day.

She watches Zuko teach Aang with an intensity rivaled by none. Maybe it’s the fire spirit, alive and flaming inside his heart. Katara sees him work through his own sense of honor by trying to right the wrong he did chasing Aang across the world.

It makes her mad. Zuko gets to just redeem himself like this, with terrible jokes about being bushed that make Sokka laugh. Aang loves him already, pure eyes shining up at his precious Sifu Zuko. Toph liked him as soon as he offered to give her rides on his back. And Katara…doesn’t get to make better of her own past.

She stews like fire flakes in sea prunes until she explodes, which isn’t that long. For a waterbender, Katara always did have a temper.

~~~~

In the end, it is her sense of responsibility, to being a better person, that keeps Katara from killing Yon Rha.

She hates that. She wants to be vicious, sees the light of revenge in Zuko’s eyes and tries to follow. But after bloodbending the captain of the Southern Raiders, she can’t bring herself to kill this pitiful man, because she’s above that, and it sucks.

Zuko holds her on Appa’s back on the way home as she cries out a river of tears. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out as her racking sobs start to fade.

Zuko squeezes her a little tigher. “It’s okay,” he rasps, and she realizes that it is. That they are.

She understands that she also has a duty to forgive Zuko. And Katara has never shirked away from something that must be done.

After that, she when goes to clean Zuko’s dishes after the morning meal, and instead he scoops up everyone’s dishes and does them all for her. He starts to help her clean every day.

~~~~

Katara likes to bend the ocean water from the Ember Island beach at night, when the moon is just beginning to shine and the beach is empty. She feels strong, bending with quick, smooth strokes that make the waves arc above her head and around. Sometimes she wades out, up to her hips, and practices keeping herself afloat while rapidly bending the water around her into complicated ice patterns. 

Zuko starts to join her on the beach, just watching from the shore. At first, she asks him if there’s anything he needs from her, but he just shakes his head with a wry smile. “It’s nice to see someone do something beautiful on this hateful island,” he tells her, and she blushes. 

At the end of the night, when she’s worn herself out making ice patterns in the sky, she flops on the sand next to him. “It’s nice to get some space from it all,” she says, aimlessly.

Zuko chuckles, and there it is again—that hoarse laugh that catches her attention, makes her heart race. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe I should have done that when I traveled the world hunting the Avatar. It really could have been an extended vacation.”

Katara giggles in spite of herself. “Obviously, you’d have to check every beach in the Fire Nation for any signs of him,” she says.

Zuko laughs outright at that. “And Uncle would insist we make sure he’s not in any of the tea shops. What if the Avatar learned to play pai sho? Better practice.”

At the mention of his uncle, Zuko turns melancholy again, and they spend the rest of the evening on the beach in quiet silence. 

It becomes a habit, to sit and chat on the beach in the moonlight. Katara tells him about Yue, and Zuko talks about the origins of firebending, and soon they settle into an easy rhythm, trading stories or just sitting in contented silence. It’s almost too easy—but Katara remembers how quickly she had gotten comfortable with him in Ba Sing Se, and realizes that though Zuko may be prickly on the outside, his spirit makes sense to her.

~~~~

They sit next to each other at the Ember Island players, shoulders pressing together delicately, and Katara tries not to think about the heat radiating from that small point of contact. 

But then Aang kisses her at the playhouse, tells her he’s jealous of Zuko in the play. She shakes her head in surprise, not realizing that this is what he meant. The pain and confusion in Aang’s eyes wrenches at her heart, and how can she say no? So she says nothing of her bond with Zuko, just tells Aang that she doesn’t know. That she needs time. She knows what she has to do.

~~~~

Zuko saves her life in a blur of lightning, crackling electricity that even she can feel running through her bones. She can’t heal him yet, not with Azula chasing her around—hears angry screams echoing through the courtyard—realizes that they are her own—watches the light glinting off Azula’s steely eyes, so like Zuko’s and yet so unlike them.  
Katara traps Azula in an ice cage and ties her up, only half as tightly as she deserves, before rushing over to Zuko on the ground. Oh La, it’s a good thing she’s gotten so fast at healing—Zuko needs every precious second she can give him. “Thank you,” he breathes.

“I think I should be thanking you,” she says, and pulls him close.

~~~~

Aang asks her to come travel with him, to be with him, and Katara loves Aang too much to let him down. Loves him too much to break his heart like this…and she has never been one to shy away from what she knows she has to do. Knows she would be happy, and she could make Aang happy. 

So she says yes. If Zuko’s face flashes behind her eyes, she ignores it.

~~~~

The night before she and Aang are planning to leave, she spends having tea with Fire Lord Zuko in the gardens. 

It’s quiet at first, Katara unsure of what to say. 

“I get it,” he says roughly, and Katara knows he understands her better than anyone else ever has. Honor, duty, responsibility, respect. It’s all the same.

“Just know that you will always have a home here,” Zuko tells her, pulling her into his arms.

She does not cry then, only later, when she is alone. Just once.

~~~~

Katara and Aang are happy. It’s easy to settle into their life—Aang’s in demand as a diplomat all over the world, and she’s been named Special Ambassador for the Southern Water Tribe. 

They explore the world together. Aang is still the same kid who she’s always loved, but she comes to love the adult he is growing into too, taller than her and a little more serious than he was before. Life is always interesting with him. Aang comes every day with jokes and tricks to make her laugh, and being loved by his genuine kindness makes her feel safe and warm inside. Love grows between them.

Eventually, she and Aang have a fight. It’s been three years and something’s just not fitting together. Loving Aang is easy, so easy, like fitting into a comfortable glove. But sometimes it’s missing—Katara can’t put a finger on it—some spark? She knows they’re going to get married, but doesn’t feel like she can face a lifetime together with this missing piece.

Maybe if they have sex, she decides firmly. Maybe that will help. Sex is spicy, right?

Aang refuses to sleep with her.

“That’s not a good reason, Katara,” he says firmly, and Katara groans.

“Not everything has to be for a good reason, Aang!” she retorts.

“Yes, it does,” he tells her, lips pressed together in a thin line. “This is our relationship. It has to be perfect.”

When they both dig their heels in, things implode. They are both just so stubborn. But this is one of the first things they can’t take a moment to cool off, walk it out, and talk through gently together. Katara’s so angry that she won’t have a calm conversation about it, and Aang just gets more and more frustrated about how upset Katara is over things that he thinks are unreasonable. She knows she’s being stubborn, being selfish, but she’s stuck, unwilling to just let it go. The longer this argument keeps going on, the more _wrong_ everything feels.

She tells Aang icily that he can drop her off with friends so she can think things through, decide if she wants to be with him or not, and he replies shortly, “Fine. Have it your way. We can take a break.”

He leaves her in Caldera City, close to Zuko’s palace, and flies off to go spend the summer meditating with Guru Pathik. 

~~~~

Katara storms into the Fire Nation palace, blows by seventeen of Zuko’s guards and servants, finds him administering economics of something—god, she doesn’t care what—in one of his meeting rooms. All his advisors look up awkwardly at her entrance that sends the water icing over in their cups. “Do you have a minute?” she says tensely, and his face softens before he ushers his advisors out of the room.

This time, she cries when Zuko hugs her.

He cancels his meetings for the weekend and they sit in the garden catching up. She and Aang have come by to visit every few months, but it’s been a long time since she and Zuko had hours just to chat by themselves.

She tells him how Aang is wonderful, loves her in ways she cannot comprehend. How loving Aang is so easy, but yet not quite everything she hoped it would be. She tells him about their fight, and their break—“I just can’t be with him right now,” she says shakily, and Zuko holds her small hands in his quietly.

He tells her that and Mai have been talking again, just a bit; her family has stayed far away from the capital ever since Zuko was coronated as Fire Lord, along with most of Ozai’s other loyalists. “We’re talking about getting married, maybe next year,” he admits awkwardly, and Katara nods. 

“That’s a wise political choice,” she tells him. “I hope it works out really well for you, that you both are happy,” she says, and means it.

Zuko shrugs. “It’s the right thing to do,” he says, “and Mai and I can be a good team.”

Katara knows what it is to do what she must. She sees in him that Zuko feels this even more deeply now-- _what he must_ is so much bigger than just him, now: it’s the whole Fire Nation.

“When was the last time you did something just for yourself?” she asks, biting her lip.

Zuko’s golden eyes stare deeply into hers. His brow furrows, and he lets out a single laugh. “I’m not sure.”

Katara takes him to bed.

~~~~

It’s not what she expected.

She’d thought—that Zuko’s calloused palms would scrape and hurt, that he’d be so much more confident than she is, that he wouldn’t hunger for it like she does. 

Standing against the closed door inside her room, she puts herself up on her tiptoes—god, how long has he been so tall?—closes her eyes, and presses her lips to his hesitantly.

Zuko stays still for a moment, and then she feels his lips part slightly under hers, big hands coming to grip her waist. She lets out a sigh, and Zuko leans into the kiss, dipping his tongue in between her lips.

Zuko’s calloused palms do scrape, but she leans into the sensation, itching for anything she can feel through layers of blue silk. He inhales sharply when she slides her hands around his robes, under his tunic, and onto his soft skin covering toned abs. She marvels at the planes of his body, lets out a little laugh. “I can’t believe you still have enough time to train, to feel like this.”

Zuko smiles into her shoulder. “The Fire Lord has to be the strongest firebender in the country,” he tells her seriously. “Plus, it’s my favorite part of the day.”

Katara resolves to make sure he has a new favorite part of the day as long as she’s here.

She kisses his mouth and along his shoulder and his neck, swirls her tongue along the slightly smoke-tasting skin there, lets the little goosebumps from the kisses he’s leaving all up and down her neck and shoulder run along her body. She hasn’t felt this way in a long time, and her heart races when Zuko picks her up, wrapping her legs around his waist, and carries her giggling to the bed. He reverently peels her specially made Water-Tribe-blue silks off her, stands over her and slides his hands along her sides, sending sparks up and down her spine.

She realizes he’s leaving her the opportunity to set a boundary here, leaving her chest wrappings on, and resolves to immediately blow through that line. She sees him biting his lip as she unties her wrappings, and his hands gently caress each of her breasts, one at a time—brushing the sides, the bottom, and eventually dipping down to press at her nipples. Encouraged by the gasp she can’t help but let out, he kneels between her legs, lavishes her nipples with his tongue, as she shivers under his attention.

She reaches out, searching for the contact of his skin on hers, and Zuko sheds his robes, all the way down to his underclothes, before she pulls him onto the bed with her. He lets out a choked out moan as she straddles his legs, bends over to kiss him, rolls her hips over his and against the hard length that sits there. His possessive hands run along her body—hips, breasts, neck, hair, and back again. “These hips,” he whispers, and despite it all, she blushes.

She’s lost all her underclothes now and Zuko is curled between her legs, tongue darting lightly between her folds to slide up and down and in and it’s all she can do to gasp and curl her fingers in his hair, grip his shoulder so tightly that she might leave a bruise. As his tongue flicks against that special spot, he slides a finger gently inside her and Katara, Katara _can’t breathe_ as the wave building inside her threatens to crest. One finger turns into two and then he is looking up at her, pupils blown wide, watching her as his fingers gently slide in and out, and Zuko runs his thumb in small circles over her clit and the wave breaks inside her, Katara shakes apart, breathing hard, nerves in her body shorting out.

Zuko smiles at her when she opens her eyes, just a little self-satisfied grin, and she decides it’s her turn.

She presses him back down to the bed under her. It’s not _duty_ or _responsibility_ but _want _and _need_ that send her down Zuko’s thighs. Katara wraps her hand around his cock, and his breath hitches as he looks down his body to where she sits. She smirks at him, and after a few easy strokes, wraps her lips around his cock, and Katara knows how to slide her tongue to spread the slick fluid he’s leaking from his cock. Zuko brokenly chokes out her name and she wonders if maybe this, this is what she was looking for. She wrings every last moan she can out of Zuko with her tongue until he lets out half-pleads—“Katara, please,” and “Katara, if you don’t stop, I’m going to—” and “Oh Agni, Katara, can we—".__

__Straddling him, she sinks down on his cock and he lets out a soft _oh_. He’s thick and hard and she feels so full, so _right_ , and she gives him tiny gasps of her own as he rolls his hips under her._ _

__They stay like that for a few moments, reveling in the feeling, before he places his hands back on her hips and thrusts inside her in earnest. “Zuko,” she breathes, his cock splitting her open, filling her up, pressure against all the spots she needs to be touched--and as he hits just the right spot inside her, she can feel herself coming near the peak of the wave again._ _

__Zuko senses her closeness, drops a hand below her navel, rubs wide circles along her folds—and sits up to kiss her through it as she comes apart on him again. “Fuck, Katara,” he groans, and she holds him close, desperate for his touch to ground her. She leans her face into his, kisses him as his thrusts become erratic, tongue swiping sloppily against his—and then she presses a kiss under his left eye, on his scar, and he gasps and comes under her._ _

__Afterwards, nestled under Zuko’s arm, Katara bites her lip. “Was this the right thing to do?” she asks._ _

__Zuko hums, pressing a delicate kiss to her forehead. “Did it feel right? Sometimes you do something because it can be done, not because it has to.”_ _

__~~~~_ _

__The summer passes. Katara quietly moves into Zuko’s rooms, and they have breakfast together every day, sharing stories and smiles and talk about what they’re up to for the week. She spends the mornings shouting herself hoarse, raising hell on behalf of the Water Tribes with snooty Earth Kingdom ambassadors and dense Fire Nation scribes. She spars with Zuko many afternoons, until they’re both sweaty and the air is humid with all the evaporated water. When anyone asks, she’s visiting an old friend on an extended diplomatic assignment._ _

__She is happy._ _

__But Zuko’s Fire Sages whisper complaints about her—about that damn waterbender. “Fire Lord Zuko,” they say when they think she’s not listening, “You cannot pollute the royal line. What if she gives birth to a waterbending child?”_ _

__Zuko, in a show of calmness he never exhibited in their youth, stonily tells his Fire Sages that he appreciates their concerns and will take them under advisement._ _

__In front of the sages, Katara smiles sweetly, gives them no excuse other than her blood to think less of her. But with Zuko, she acknowledges the truth. “Fire Lady isn’t my duty to take on,” she says. “You need someone else here for that. This isn’t my place.”_ _

__With heavy sighs, he agrees._ _

__They have slow, languorous sex that night. Sex that lasts as long as they can—because now that they’ve acknowledged the deadline, that the end is coming, they savor every moment. Zuko kisses his way delicately up her thighs, strokes his fingers inside her so slowly she thinks she might shatter apart. Katara lays kisses all around the edge of his scar, up the line of his cheek and over his eye, his breath heavy on her ear. “Thank you,” she whispers._ _

__Zuko kisses her on the cheek. “You will always have a home here,” he says, and her eyes well up with tears._ _

__~~~~_ _

__Aang comes back at the end of the summer, and Katara is ready to see him again. To love him again._ _

__They talk for a long time, hidden away on the rim of the caldera overlooking the city._ _

__“I don’t need to know what happened with Zuko,” he tells her, eyes knowing and so, so patient. Ever forgiving. “I just need to know if you want to get back together with me.”_ _

__This time, when she says yes, she knows it’s right. She climbs back up on Appa’s back, snuggles into his fur. It’s easier, now, to appreciate Aang for all that he is, instead of thinking of all that he’s not._ _

__They go to Zuko and Mai’s wedding. It’s a huge affair, beautiful and dramatic, full of fanfare. It seems like everyone in the Fire Nation is out for the party, and Mai looks and acts every inch the perfect Fire Lady bride._ _

__Katara and Suki help Zuko get dressed for the wedding, what seems like a hundred layers of robes and scarves and shoulder pads. Katara is there, doing her duty as Zuko’s best friend, and Suki lends her expertise in arranging multi-layered skirts for maximum mobility. “Can you even bend in all this?” Katara teases, and Zuko flushes._ _

__“I can bend in anything, Katara,” he gripes. But she just laughs, and refuses him when he proposes a sparring match right then._ _

__“It’ll ruin all the makeup Suki just put on you!”_ _

__Zuko smiles proudly as he and Mai hold hands and parade down the courtyard. Mai even cracks a lip upwards into a half smile, which Katara thinks means she’s bursting with excitement. Katara hold’s Aang’s hand in her lap the whole time, and after Zuko and Mai pass by, Aang gives her an extra squeeze._ _

__~~~~_ _

__Katara and Aang get married and she beams as wide as her face can go, seeing her own gladness reflected in Aang’s glowing grey eyes. They have three sweet and happy babies, who grow up reveling in the joy that their father carries around with him like a cloak. Aang is right for this, she thinks, cuddling a baby Bumi, as he twirls the giggling Kya and Tenzin around on tiny balls of air. These babies are hers to have, and this man is hers to love._ _

__~~~~_ _

__Katara is old now, sixty-five, when Mai dies. Aang has been gone for eight long years, most of which Katara has spent training the new Avatar—just a little girl, but one big enough to know her Nana Katara. All of her own babies are grown, living all over the world._ _

__She goes to Caldera City for the funeral. It’s held at sunset; a Fire Nation tradition, to mourn the sun going down on their Fire Lady’s life. Afterwards, she hugs Zuko tightly. “I know,” she says softly, as he slumps into her arms._ _

__Zuko cries quiet tears in the dark, and Katara runs her hands along his shoulders and the back of his head. “It’s hard, isn’t it,” she murmurs._ _

__“Will you stay?” he rasps, and how can she say no?_ _

__~~~~~_ _

__Katara leaves the new avatar behind. There are younger and faster waterbenders to be Korra’s master, and Katara has somewhere else to be._ _

__“Someone has to mind your house,” she grumbles to Zuko as she creakily moves her boxes into the Fire Lord’s rooms._ _

__Zuko chuckles. “You just can’t leave an old man to his own irresponsible devices, can you?” he asks._ _

__Katara frowns. “I’ll move back down to the South Pole, see if I don’t,” she says. “That avatar could always use a little more discipline. She’s a wild one.”_ _

__He clasps her in his arms, no longer young and muscled, but seventy years old, and wiry. “No, I don’t think you’ll go,” Zuko says in her ear. “Your home is here.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> oh MAN. [here's a playlist i listened to while writing this. ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6orgp5CkgjzYuNu9ZDlMs7?si=1-8XPU9PRbC636oSRyKUFA) I hope you liked it! :)


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